Protein Supplements Prevent Muscle Loss: Myth or Fact?

Getting back to Judo as fast as you can

What do you do? You've had an injury or an illness and your not able to exerciser the affected parts.

Everybody knows that not using you muscle for long periods of time may lead to substantial loss of muscle and strength, even when you are otherwise healthy. Muscle loss can occur even after just a few days.

There is thinking out there that says you can avoided all this by a protein supplement regiment.

Is there researcher out there on this to prove it one way or another?

Well yes there is:

Investigations were made into whether protein supplements twice a day would be a preventative.

Randomly divided into a protein supplement group or a control group, 23 healthy older (69 ± 1 years) men were recruited and one of their legs was put into a full-leg cast at the knee. The protein supplement group received a mixture of 20.7g of protein, 9.3g of carbohydrate, and 3.0g of fat twice daily.

After 5 days period they were all scanned.

What happened?

Nothing much! There were no significant differences between the groups. Basically this myth is busted. Don't bother doing anything like this. Just spend the time and get better. That's the best cure.

To be fair, there are some limitations of the study however. There were no healthy younger men and no females at all. It could also be trialed over a longer period of time. But although I'm willing to be proved wrong, I'm not convinced that it would make any difference. Does anyone really think it would change anything?

There are better things you could do that are more reliable and time tested.

1) Do what your Doctor says
2) Take the time to build up again after everything is fixed

It may be a bit of a bitter pill to swallow so to speak, but it is also the safest way to make sure you get back to your Judo training.

The study: Skeletal muscle disuse atrophy is not attenuated by dietary protein supplementation in healthy older men, by Dirks, Wall, Nilwik, Weerts, Verdijk, and Van Loon, in The Journal of Nutrition, 2014